The USS Woodrow Wilson belonged to a generation of submarines that were never meant to be seen, remembered, or celebrated in the usual way. She was built to disappear, to wait, and to make catastrophe unnecessary by making it inevitable in theory. As a Lafayette-class fleet ballistic missile submarine, she formed part of the original “Forty-One for Freedom,” the silent backbone of America’s sea-based nuclear deterrent during the most dangerous decades of the Cold War.